California Assembly Passes Gay Marriage Bill

Wednesday • September 7, 2005

From The Los Angeles Times: The California Legislature made history Tuesday as the Assembly passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. With no votes to spare, California’s lawmakers became the first in the United States to act without a court order to sanction gay marriages. The measure was approved after three Democratic lawmakers who abstained on a similar proposal that failed in June changed their minds under intense lobbying by bill author Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and gay and civil rights activists.No Republicans voted in favor of the bill. Forty-one of the Assembly’s 47 Democrats voted yes; four Democrats voted “no,” and two abstained.
The law would change the legal definition of marriage from “a civil contract between a man and a woman” to “a civil contract between two persons.”
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expcted to veto the bill, though he has not yet publicly pledged to do so.
Civilizations stand or fall on distinctions like the definition of marriage. This vote by the California Assembly, coming fast on the heels of a similar vote by the state’s Senate, tells us a great deal about where we stand as a nation.